Our next person who foreshadows who Jesus is and what he does is Joseph the son of Jacob. Genesis has been building up from the beginning. Genesis 3 taught us to look out for a Son of Eve. Genesis 12 taught us that through Abraham’s son all people of the world will be blessed.  Read More

If you could sum up the book of Genesis in a word it would be: bless. After God made everything he blessed his creation. God also blessed the 7th day.  Read More

Before we get into where Jesus is at in this passage, and yes, he is personally there and speaking, we first need to detox on some assumptions. The word you and I need to detox from is the word “angel.”  Read More

Hymns are a great way to pray. Our hymn for today is #351 Creator of the Stars of Night. Read these verses as a prayer:  Read More

Blessed is the man. That is how the whole book of Psalms begins. But who is this blessed man? Psalm 1 is not speaking of mankind generically. It is not saying, “blessed is the type of person who does this.” That is not right. The way the Hebrew says it has in mind a specific person.  Read More

Isaac is a type of Jesus Christ. By type, we could say a “foreshadowing.” Moments in the life of Isaac will suddenly remind us of Jesus Christ. We see that in Genesis 22 today.  Read More

Imagine that you had spent hundreds of hours building something or making something. You put a lot of love and attention into it. You care about it. It is yours and you see it as a treasure.  Read More

Read Genesis 1 “And God said…” Catch that? How did God make the heavens and the earth? He did not take material already present and then build a house like we do. God spoke and it was so.   Read More

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have eternal life.” John 5:39-40 “Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning with this Scripture (Isaiah 53:7-8) he told the Eunuch the good news about Jesus.” Acts 8:35  Read More

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” 1 John 4:2 St. John, in the verse quoted above, is dealing with a strange teaching that in his day at the end of the 1st Century was just beginning to make strong inroads into the Church. A teaching that said that Jesus Christ did not have flesh and blood. This strange teaching did not deny that Jesus existed, no one in the ancient world ever denied that, everyone knew Jesus existed, only a fool would have said that, but Gnosticism taught that Jesus was not someone that you could touch and feel.   Read More

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude 3  Read More

Matthew’s Gospel is primarily about the authority of Jesus Christ. The verses above illustrate how it plays out in the Gospel, though I could have picked more. Matthew 8:5-13 and Matthew 21:23-27 are also about the authority of Jesus (go read those to flesh this concept out more). So, it would be good to consider what authority is. Authority is the permission given by a higher up to carry out a task. This is different than power. Power is the ability to do something.  Read More